Tools for content distribution

Even if you’re a complete novice, you’ve no doubt stumbled across PRWeb at some point. Whether you’re looking to share details of a company promotion, product launch, or partnership, PRWeb is the go-to platform for creating and distributing press releases.

This tool instantly connects your news to its subscribers, bloggers, and journalists, as well as feeding it to search engines and online news outlets. PRWeb runs via a tiered pricing structure, so you can choose exactly how your press releases are distributed.

Medium enables the broadcast of quality content to a wide community of followers, and for PR teams with stories they want to tell, it’ll prove to be a powerful channel. The platform encourages readers to comment on anything from the entire post to individual sentences, allowing for conversations that are both broad or granular.

What’s more, the tool provides useful numerical insight including page views, read ratio, recommendations and referrals across all the social networks on which the story appears.

Tools for social media management

Hootsuite offers a whole host of features to help PRs manage their social media. With this handy tool, you can schedule posts, track your, and your competitors’ brand mentions, monitor hashtags and keywords, as well as identify and engage with journalists and bloggers.

Of course, although it brings to light many positives, social media also functions as a platform for the public to vent their frustrations – in real time. Hootsuite comes in handy here too, allowing you to keep an eye on who is saying what about your brand at all times, and respond accordingly.

Tools for monitoring brand coverage

Allowing you to receive targeted updates straight to your inbox for free, Google alerts should be a fundamental part of any PR’s toolkit. Simply set up some keywords relevant to your industry, brand, products, services, and competitors, and you’ll be the first to know about any coverage of these terms.

Used to its full potential, Google Alerts can be a gateway for networking with influencers, starting conversations, and coming up with new campaign ideas.

You’ve written a great story, and people are talking about it, but this is really just the start of the PR’s journey. Clients will often want to see evidence of all this work in shining lights, or in the form of a media clipbook.

This is where the handy Coverage book comes in – simply paste URLs of your coverage into the tool, which will then automatically be made into screenshots to create an eye-catching and interactive report. Coverage book will not only save heaps of time in building you this pretty presentation, but the tool also does a stellar job at generating traffic analytics.

Tools for finding media opportunities

ResponseSource and Journolink are similar platforms to one another, making it possible for PRs and small businesses to quickly and easily connect with journalists and industry professionals through a massive selection of media coverage opportunities.

Signing yourself up to JournoRequests provides a daily update of requests for a source from journalists, organised into topic categories. Replying to JournoRequests is a brilliant way to secure some free PR, it’s also a useful tool for gaining insight into the topics that journalists are currently writing about, which can help inspire your own ideas.

Tools for outreach

We’ve all been in a situation where we’ve hit ‘send’ on an email, and then we’re left wondering if it’s been received and opened, or if it’s wound up lost in cyberspace. This is where Hubspot’s email tracker (previously known as Sidekick) may come in handy, by alerting you if someone opens your email, clicks on your links, or downloads your attachments. When pitching ideas or sharing news over email, this nifty tool can save a lot of time and hassle, avoiding those awkward follow-ups.

There are of course many other savvy PR tools available online that can help boost strategy and performance. I’d love to hear about any tools that you’ve tried, or are thinking about giving a go in the comments below.